>Weren't Ross Macdonald's early novels self-confessed
Chandler knock-offs (or
>modeled closely on the style, I should say)? He went
on to find a unique
>voice. Something different, but it has put him in the
upper rank of
>hard-boiled writers, too. Yeah, some imitators are
able to push past that
>and come into their own later.
I look at writing as a craft, a difficult skill that you have
to teach yourself by reading critically and trying to use
what you see in other writers. It seems to me that writers
SHOULD learn by imitating other writers whose skill speaks to
them. As they get good at their job, they begin to be able to
alter and surpass their models in various ways. In other
words, the hard workers absorb the lessons and go on from
there.
(After all -- ALL source material is limited in one way or
another.) The unimaginative phoneys stick to trying to copy
something; they get only a part of what they're copying and
don't manage to develop it. It all seems to me to be
perfectly reasonable. Shakespeare did it this way...
Marianne
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